Blogging About Blogging

An expat blogger friend of mine remarked the other day that she’s still not sure blogging from America isn’t pretentious. I’d have to agree. In fact, I’d expand it to say that blogging from anywhere is fairly pretentious. I mean, who am I to think that my journal would make interesting reading for acquaintances, or even friends? Let alone strangers!

The blogs that stick to one topic, like recipes, fashion, or politics, make more sense. They’re kind of like books published in serial form. That’s normal. Even Dickens made it big publishing serially. But what about those of us like me, who are more or less publishing our memoirs as they happen? It is a little pretentious when you think about it. And maybe a bit exhibitionist too. What is it exactly that compels me (and millions of other people) to post the happenings of our day-to-day lives on the World Wide Web for anyone to read? And what are we all doing reading details from the day-to-day lives not only of our friends, but of people we’ve never met?

I guess for me, blogging is something that has evolved in my life. When I initially started blogging, I only wanted to post when I had something really deep and philosophical to say. I guess I envisioned it as my dazzling contribution to the Great Conversation. Unfortunately, my life at the time was not as deep and philosophical as I had initially imagined, with the result that my blog posts ended up being very occasional. That old blog is still in existence, esoteric Nietzsche quote and all, but I haven’t even visited it myself in years.

I didn’t create Casteluzzo and start blogging in earnest until I found something to blog about: getting Italian citizenship. I decided that I would chronicle every detail in our quest for Italian citizenship, so that other aspiring Italians would have a clear path to follow. At the time, I only knew of a handful of South Americans and two U.S. citizens who had succeeded in (or at least were in the process of) obtaining Italian citizenship in Italy. What a boon to the world to have a meticulous account of all the nitty-gritties of an abstruse and little-known bureaucratic process in a distant foreign country! I had found my calling in life.

However, I soon discovered that our case was not exactly textbook. Even gathering the documents in the United States involved some tricky maneuvers. And once we got to Italy, all bets were off as we dodged the giant sticky balls of red tape that every government official in Italy seemed intent on throwing at us. From being a helpful list of steps in a logical process, my blog became a chronicle of our ridiculous misadventures in a country where we were basically inarticulate and illiterate, and trying to accomplish something that everyone said was impossible.

In the end, I’m afraid that the best the minute details of our Italian citizenship story will do is scare off any potential citizenship applicants, which was the precise opposite of my original intent. Probably the only tidbit of advice with universal application is that every visit to an Italian government office should be immediately followed by a gelato break. But the process did do one thing for me: by the time Tony actually miraculously walked out of the 1567th Italian government office holding a beautiful red passport, I was addicted to blogging.

It was a way to write that I could fit into my life, because it only had to be produced in short snatches. It was something to offer my relatives so they could know I wasn’t dead, even when I was abysmally bad at keeping in touch. It was somewhere to write down those funny things that happened so I wouldn’t forget them.

And then it became something more. People started commenting, sometimes my family, sometimes friends I hadn’t seen for years, sometimes total strangers. But even better, people would would email me out of the blue to tell me that something I had said resonated with them. When you’ve just moved to a foreign country and feel a little lonely (a circumstance in which I’ve found myself pretty often during the past couple of years), it means a lot when someone reaches out to make a personal connection.

The more I could visualize writing to a friendly group of kindred spirits (rather than flinging it out into the vast blue void), the more I felt like blogging. In some ways, I felt like I could let people know more about myself and my thoughts through my blog than in person. I’m kind of introverted that way. The more I blog, the more natural it feels to talk about things I’d always thought about but never had occasion to say. I used to get really sad about all the amazing people I’d met in various places, but never really gotten to know because we’ve moved. Now at least they can still read my blog. In some way, it feels like staying connected, even if all I hear back is the periodic “I love your blog.” And that’s why I really love it when other people have blogs too. Because then we can both stay up on each other’s lives.

I don’t know. Maybe my idea of reading each other’s online journals as a way to keep up a relationship is just a pathetic reflection on modern life (or my life). Maybe it’s another one of those facebook things. But somehow it works for me. It helps me stay connected to an outside world that sometimes feels so far away.

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4 thoughts on “Blogging About Blogging”

I began writing in a diary when I was 12… we were stationed in England and I’d begged for one for Christmas. My mother got it for me at WHSmith’s, and I loved that thing. I filled seven diaries over the years… where I’d gone, what we’d done, how I felt, and what my mother did NOW. ((Long story. I’m the white sheep in a black sheep family.))

One day my mother decided that my keeping diaries was ‘not a good idea’ and that I ‘wouldn’t want to remember’… so she took them all and threw them away. I never got over it. I’m still not over it. All of those memories, gone.

I can’t diary. I tried again after they were gone. I tried again after I moved out. I tried again after I got married. I just… couldn’t.

But when I got pregnant with Lydia, I started writing a weekly ‘report’ of what I was feeling, what we were doing to prepare, how it was going, and it became a ‘newsletter’ on my Geocities website, so that my grandma in Florida could know how we were doing, how the baby was coming along…

And then one day I got a letter from ‘Bianca’ over at Xanga.com, a web-log community that was just starting up. She said it was like keeping a journal, only you could make friends and read other people’s stuff, too. I was intrigued. I’d just had my first baby, didn’t need pregnancy reports anymore, but wanted to continue writing about my experience in motherhood (and other thoughts). I had no idea there was no such person as ‘Bianca’ – that she was a marketing ploy targeting website owners in 2000 in order to start something new called ‘blogging’.

I’ve been hooked ever since. I write to record what I feel. What I do. How my children do what they do. What they say. The horror that has been dealing first with my mother, then my father (now estranged) and my in-laws (also estranged). I added four boys, writing through each pregnancy and experience with them. Starting to homeschool. Starting to homestead. Setting up our own place, decorating, building a cider press, and more.

Then, on top of that, writing to expose the lies of the christian church that I kept stumbling on. Chronicling my journey to Messianic Judaism. Being called to a ministry that is considered highly controversial. ((Which is why I haven’t linked to my blog.))

But that’s why I blog. It’s a record of who I am, what I’ve been, what I learn, and where we’re going. I print them off, have a HUGE binder of entries (which I’m behind on updating, but shhh).

You do the same, to a lesser extent. Here, you have an accounting of where you’ve been, what you experience, how you feel, and what you envision for your future. We all need to ‘sound off’ – some people do it on shrink’s sofas. Others on radio talk shows or Oprah. Others in diaries, some in letters. You and I? We blog.

I started my blog when I knew we were moving abroad as a way to chronicle the process and keep family/friends at home in the loop, but I was soon overwhelmed by the reality of expatriation and didn’t write much the first year. Finding your blog through Expats in Italy inspired me to try again and encouraged me through rough patches with our transition. Now, though, Italy has spat us out, and we’re heading back to the States. I guess I may have to instigate a “Flashback Friday” to write everything I wanted to about Italy but hadn’t yet (full credit to you and Bridget of Arabia if I do, though).

Great post. I’m still trying to find my blogging voice. I always wondered who would care about what I have to say or share. What a surprise to have a growing readership. Blogging has opened up a great community of worldwide relationships.

I like the word ‘abstruse.’ It is like the world took ‘obtuse’ and ‘abstract’ and melded them into a gloriously chimerical creation!

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Sarah Bringhurst Familia

We've lived on five continents, and we're still in search of a dream to call home. In the meantime, I blog about the joys, disasters, and embarrassing missteps of expat life, educating my third culture kids, and our roller-coaster journey to Italian citizenship.

In my free time I like eating cheese, reading books, and seeing the world. Current adventure: Amsterdam!